One of the most popular stories ever on this site was about DrumPants, a set of lightweight MIDI triggers that fit either on or under your clothing, and which trigger drum sounds when you touch them. The concept was simple and the execution was too — or, as simple as building hardware ever is. The first version was the result of a very successful crowd-funding campaign, and a less-successful round on the TV show Shark Tank.
Now, a few months after they shipped a finished product, the DrumPants guys are back for another round, this time going for $35,000 to build a more polished version of the original. The sound module appears more like a piece of finished good, the pad themselves have a nice graphic, and the firmware’s been updated.
If they hit their $35,000 goal — which feels very modest, compared to some of the mega-rounds of the last year — the founders promise to release nearly all their software as open source, so other hands can extend the platform even further.
As a general rule, we don’t report on crowdfunding attempts any more because so many of them are either trivial or badly executed. But DrumPants has a good track record, has a supply and manufacturing chain in place, and has set a September ship date for $159 for a complete set.